Sachin Tendulkar: Of shaping childhood and adulthood - A fan's tribute

Sachin Tendulkar

‘Boost is the secret of my energy’ ran the slogan of a very popular energy drink with Sachin Tendulkar as the brand ambassador, way back in the 90s. It was quite a unique ad that showed a few kids milling about Tendulkar, raising their mugs full of the energy drink and repeating after him, ‘Boost is the secret of our energy.’

As kids, both Boost – the energy drink – and the catch-phrase caught up with me and my cousins quite quickly and it wasn’t long before we were mimicking the catch-phrase, raising our mugs – even our water glasses – to it. We never grew out of it and the more frequently the ad came up, the louder our voices used to sing-along the words.

Life, at that moment, was picturesque, endless and felt like ours to conquer. We felt like super-heroes because we were drinking Boost; a drink that not only proclaimed about giving us kids energy, but was also vouched by the country’s leading sports star. In our minds, we pictured ourselves wearing capes and going about solving mysteries just as our cricketing hero was bashing up bowlers on the cricketing field. Looking back, all of it seems naive and childish, and yet coupled with a certain innocence that only childhood could inspire.

But none of these emotions could match the thrill of the bat that the company started offering as a free gift, along with a certain quantity of the product. All of us wanted one, without thinking of the number of packets and bottles of Boost that our parents would have to buy so that each kid in the family could have his own bat to show off. Most family members were baffled at the sudden urgency of us all to own a bat. My uncle offered to buy one – of the best quality – from a sports store that he knew. But we didn’t want the ‘best quality bat’, did we?

We wanted the bat that Boost was giving away. The one that had Sachin Tendulkar’s autograph. In the frenzy that we were in, quality seemed like a relative feature. So much so, that we believed that if the bat had Sachin’s autograph on it, it would have to be of the ‘bestest’ quality. After all, Sachin wasn’t going to autograph any low quality product, was he? Like lawyers, we argued with our parents then, all of us raising and emphasising these points with our words and our tears, when the former failed.

Finally, my parents relented and I did get the bat. But with the proviso that it was to be a common bat to be shared between all of us. We did try our best to share it, taking turns to hit shots with it while we were playing; raising it over our heads in an effort to copy Sachin’s gestures and taking extreme care of it as if it were a priceless heirloom of the family. I was perhaps the one who was more possessive of it, more than any of my cousins, and I slept with it next to my bed at night. My family members used to be amused at this childishness but there wasn’t much that they could do to separate me and that bat.

The bat, thanks to our careful ministrations, lasted for quite a few years. Once, when the handle broke off, all of us gathered around our aunt and pestered her to try fixing it with super-glue. We cried ourselves to sleep that night cursing the cousin who had tried to be over-smart, walloping the ball so hard that the bat’s handle broke off from its torso. The next morning saw us gathered around our aunt, as if in a huddle of our own, watching her as she glued the handle back to the bat’s body and taped it, before wrapping up the proceedings by tying the repaired portion with a strong fibre-rope. The wait before the bat could be used again was painful; each one of us would keep going back to it and pat it before coming back to the others with a report of the its reparation status.

Sachin Tendulkar

After a week-long wait, when we finally untied the rope and the bat seemed to be holding fine, all of us – including our aunt – heaved a sigh of relief. It seems funny now that a mere bat had all our attention, but back then it seemed impossible for us to conceive our future without that bat.

We used to weave stories around it, our imaginations running riot about how Sachin had come to autograph it. We felt we were the chosen ones to be holding a piece of Tendulkar, and nothing else mattered beyond that. Over the course of years though, as school and its other commitments started to take precedence, our attention towards the bat started reducing, even though Sachin Tendulkar remained where he was; holding a place of pride in our hearts, along with a few other cricketers.

Priorities changed and the lack of space made it necessary that the bat be shifted to the attic. Our hearts did wrench and we did argue, but those protestations seemed half-hearted compared to our vociferousness when we wanted that bat, all those years ago. Perhaps even our parents sensed it and they didn’t relent. Thus our dear old cricket bat got tucked into the attic, though right in the front where our eyes could see it.

After a certain point of time, our eyes stopped turning to look at that bat. We had stopped playing cricket, citing age and maturity, and had become quite accustomed to watching the match proceedings through our state-of-the-art TV set. It was around the 2003 World Cup that the bat commanded attention again.

Broken yet again, it looked like a pale facsimile of the shiny, polished willow that we had gotten all those years back. Loyalty demanded that we go back to seek a second opinion about fixing the damage. And we did trudge back to our aunt. But the super-glue of the years past had made the wood waxy, making it difficult to restore the bat to its previous glory.

An ultimatum was issued to give away the bat before termites started wrecking havoc on it. The teenage heart rebelled; there was Sachin belting runs from his willow and here we were being asked to throw the bat away. As if it was nothing but a piece of wood. But no matter how much we rebelled, the decision was taken and the bat was indeed given away to the sweeper. And where we had once imagined the story of Sachin autographing it, this time we imagined our cricket bat being used as firewood in the sweeper’s hut.

The thought raised goose-bumps so we just decided to focus on the thing at hand – about India winning the World Cup. And we didn’t think of the bat again. Until now, that is.

Sachin’s retirement has brought it into focus again; the energy drink, the accompanying slogan that doesn’t seem to have the same punch as uttered by Sachin, and the cricket bat and other memorabilia that are still being offered with some other cricketer’s autograph.

Time has indeed changed, flown past, though I still can’t fathom how quickly it has gone by. I feel old – as do all my cousins – it seems childish to say that our childhood was defined by a cricketer who, for all that he was away, did mould our lives right up to our adulthood. Our happiness, our sadness and our tears were all about him when he played, and even when he retired, he brought out all those emotions in us, leaving us grateful and sombre that our childhood has been finally lost forever. Just like that cricket bat, all those years ago.